roamfandomcom-20200213-history
Roam: Chapter 06
Chapter 6 Characters * [[1899 Odd Otibryal Juctor Qualens|'Odd Otibryal Juctor Qualens']] * [[1254 Coughy Pagnal Juctor, C.|'Coughy Pagnal Juctor, C.']] * [[1172 Pronimal's Cortisy Juctor|'Pronimal's Cortisy Juctor']] * [[1780 Flashy Donimal Juctor Qualens, O.|'Flashy Donimal Juctor Qualens, O.']] * [[1817 Pagnal's Cortisy Juctor|'Pagnal's Cortisy Juctor']] * Pagnal Qualens-Donimal Juctor * Pronimal Qualens-Donimal Juctor Locations * Juctor Palace * Great Banqueting Hall of Juctor Palace * Juctor Law Library Contents Odd Otibryal Juctor Qualens The Great Banqueting Hall of the Juctor Palace was widely regarded as one of the wonders of the world. Carved out of the orange-tinged travertine capping the Juctorine Hill, its triple-domed ceilings lofting far above, decorated with masterful painted depictions of the tales of the founding of Roam, the alliance of the Familials (particularly Juctor) and the Adesican marriages in relief, its broad arched balcony windows, their lace curtains fluttering in the cooling evening breeze, providing views of the ever-changing landscape beyond the walled edges of Roam, the hall could conceivably hose fifty guests reclined for dinner, or twice that at tables if the situation demanded. Countless candle chandeliers hung down from the distant ceiling, free to swing with the ever-tilting city as it walked, providing even lighting throughout the entire hall at extravagant expense, and ornate wooden shutters for the windows and braziers with bronze animal feet stood by for slaves to moderate the temperature at the slightest whim of its inhabitants. Even when packed with guests, like at weddings or funerals, of the parties celebrating electoral successes, heaving with social graspers, the columnless room felt effortlessly spacious – never too loud to hear the person beside you, or too open to tamp the endless speeches of men at the far end into inaudibility. When it was laid out for an intimate dinner with just seven couches, the Great Banqueting Hall left nowhere to hide, which – when one of the other diners was his father – Otibryal dearly wanted to do. “In all my days,” said Coughy Pagnal again, his gritted teeth filling the room. “In all my days.” “Coughy, my life, please,” pleaded Oti’s mother, Pronimal’s Cortisy, looking at him from over the hardboiled egg that she had been delicately making her way through for several minutes. “Please what, my liver?” he asked, struggling to soften his glare as he looked over at her from his second son. She said nothing, but begged him again with her eyes. He looked away, dabbing a roughly torn hunk of walnut and cheese bread into the bowl of olive oil on his tripod table. Oti used the reprieve to look around at his family to gauge their mood: his elder brother Don was quite preoccupied with his chicken wings, snarling as he persevered at a stubborn bone with his side teeth; his older sister Cortisy – Tizzie, to differentiate her from her mother – looked even less pleased to be present than Oti across from her did, throwing her dark-rimmed eyes around the horseshoe of couches as if she wearily expected to become the focus of everyone’s tiresome ire; his red-haired little god-brothers Pagnal and Pronimal were whispering to each other across the mouth of the horseshoe, obliviously playing their private games as ever, their stained togas ample evidence that the exquisitely prepared dinner had been in part repurposed as artillery. Oti’s mother caught his eye, reluctant to give him more than a neutral expression lest she take sides between her husband and her errant son. Her short hair was casually styled for this partial reunion of her husband’s children, the white streaks through its faded red-brown a cruel continuation of the worry lines that crackled out from her ever-worried eyes, portraying her as older than her six-and-forty years. She slid her eyes away and made the easier decision, chastising Pag and Pron for their mischiefs. Oti thought about what Ife Tusk had said about family – about the bonds of biology and the perversities of the Roaman way. Oti had found himself trying to defend something he hated, mostly because of his proneness to act the contrarian, but hadn’t been able to articulate himself at all. Nothing had gone as he had hoped in that conversation with the general for which he as now being relentlessly reprimanded, but it was still the first time that he had felt like he was living his own life for as long as he could remember. And he was right: Oti didn’t believe that any of these people were his family at all, least of all his father, whose blameless bread was now quite soaked. “Do you know how old I was when I became the Patriarch of Juctor?” his father asked to nobody. When nobody answered, he looked up and around at his children. “Anyone?” “You were three,” Don answered disinterestedly around a wing. “You tell us all the time.” “Then why do I have to ask twice?” bristled the Consul. “My father died younger than I am now, and my half-father just five years later in Fuscry. I was raised in this Palace as an orphan by great men, but I would have given anything to have my father – to have somebody love me and guide me like I try and love and guide you all. And what do I get in return for my efforts?” “Coughy,” said Oti’s mother again, reaching out a soothing hand. “Quiet,” his father held out a stern finger to her. “I love you, Cortisy, but you are not above blame here.” From the way that his mother’s face contorted, Oti and everyone else knew that she was holding back a sudden gush of tears. She glanced up at the chandeliers, the candlelight swimming in her eyes. “Do any of you know what it is to be descended from Juctor?” his father continued. Even Oti’s god-brothers had fallen quiet at the thickness of his voice. “The greatest and steadiest of the gods? Where did I go so wrong with you? With all of you? Your blood runs divine, like mine and my father’s before mine, thick with potential and the burden of that potential. When Juctors falter, Roam descends into disorder, injustice and violence against the innocent. You should, each of you, embody faith, honour and obedience, and what do I receive from you?” He gestured at Don, who gave him a resentful, sidelong look. “Insouciance at best,” his father squinted. “Arrogance. Foolishness. Collusion at worst.” Oti could see his brother’s lip twitch in barely constrained response to the comment. Just as Oti thought he had managed to avoid a retort, Don muttered, “And yet the Republic still stands, father.” Coughy Pagnal had already turned his attention to Tizzie, and but for a flash of his eyes back to his Scion could have fooled his family into thinking that he had not heard the pointless reply. “Surliness,” he attributed to his daughter. “Disrespect.” Oti could see poor Tizzie’s eyes burn at being impaled by the same spear as him, her strategy of staying entirely silent and keeping her head down thwarted by the sheer breadth of their father’s ire. Unlike Don, though, she doubled down, dipping her head in apology to the Consul, her father, and humbly seeking his forgiveness, which to his shame was not immediately forthcoming. “My half-sons, Juctor help me, are more beast than man,” Oti’s father said, hollowly laughing to himself as Pag and Pron blinked at him without the slightest hint of comprehension but a honed survival instinct for when to shut up. “And, of course,” Coughy Pagnal said, sweeping his hand back round with the weight of inevitability, “my son Otibryal.” He looked genuinely distressed. “Nine-and-thirty of my two-and-forty years I have dedicated to virtue, every day asking how I could better serve my family, my city and my Gods. I sometimes wonder if you are a test sent to Juctor that I am failing, Oti, I really do.” Oti swallowed. The hurt in his father’s eyes was worse than any anger he had been braced for and with which he might have contended in kind. “You are so blessed, with talents for so many things that you squander on mischief, for what? I have no doubt that you could surpass all of my life’s achievements with only the slightest application of yourself, in days perhaps! But instead you antagonise me, and undermine Roam, and I don’t understand why. I can’t understand, Oti.” Oti’s throat was dry, despite his repeated swallowing. He shook his head. “I don’t act against you, father,” he said weakly. “Don’t you lie to me, boy,” his father said, his voice hardening. Oti wished he had said something else. “You’re not an idiot, and neither am I, despite what you might think. You know what the consequences of your actions will be. You fold them into your calculations when you make a decision,” his father made a peculiar little wave with his fingers at his own head to illustrate the assertion. “You choose to do whatever you want, anyway, knowing but not caring how we will be affected. Humiliating me. Upsetting your mother. Forcing your brother to take sides. And, now – because apparently things were getting too mundane for you? – threatening the security of the entire Republic and all of its citizens for some pointless stunt which you cannot even begin to explain.” “I could explain,” Oti said, feeling his temperature rise like his father’s, “if you had even the slightest mind to understand, of were honest and open with yourself for just one moment.” “Otibryal,” chided his mother, suddenly all spine. Oti felt his glare settle on her, and had no intention of softening it as his father did. What umpire was she, in this game where he was never allowed a turn? Don glowered at Oti, warning him off their mother. Tizzie was busying herself with figs and honey, resolutely uninvolved. “Was a son ever so insubordinate?” Coughy Pagnal turned his hands up to the heavens theatrically, as if he though Juctor might actually answer. “Fathers have killed their sons for less disrespect than this.” “Bollocks,” scoffed Oti. “Cite me an example.” “Cite me one example of a more patient father,” his father slapped the bowl of olive oil off his table, neatly undermining his point as the thick golden liquid streaked across the polished marble floor. The slaves hovering outside the horseshoe hesitated as to whether they should come and clean it up, probably wisely demurring. “Every slightest action is a battle; every favour treated as a concession. I arranged the most prestigious match on Roam, to the son of perhaps the most renowned living Consul and the beautiful daughter of the Patriarch of Voriel, a Triumphant Hero of the Republic, and you dragged your feet for nearly an entire year, mewling ungratefully like some lovesick Issycrian catamite, embarrassing me and undermining my authority.” “I married them, didn’t I?” Oti said, still wishing he hadn’t. Lumosural was a dullard, and their wife Relvas was a simpleton. “This is exactly what I mean!” his father threw his hands out, beseeching his small audience for support. “It is a legal duty of Roamans to honour their family and their parents, and to seek their prosperity. Sons do not choose to accept their father’s suggestions, they obey their commands. Your brother Don didn’t hesitate for a second when I made his match, though it is not nearly so fine an arrangement as yours.” “I’m not Don,” Oti said, hoping that Don would not take it as a slight. “I wanted something more than what you had, and what he had.” “I offered you more,” his father insisted. “And what did you offer my mother?” Oti asked, immediately unsure of this course of action, but doubling down. “Terror and obedience to her tyrant husband?” “Your mother is thrice Wife of Roam,” Coughy Pagnal roared. “Because she was married by domineering fathers to domineering husbands! No choice, no hopes of her own. Just a chunk of meat in the Blood Forum, passed around the Senators and garnished with a necklace.” “Otibryal,” snapped his mother, rending his heart, but he had a point, sentiment be damned. “I’m a man, father,” Oti said, slapping a fist against his slight chest. “I’ll never be the man you order me to be, because I have a mind, and a heart, and a soul.” “You’re a stupid, hateful boy,” his father shook his head, talking softly and surely, “corrupted by these soft ideas from our foolish foreign books, poisoned against Roam, the greatest civilisation in history, and every one of its traditions despite their proven worth over the centuries. You think that you, Otibryal Juctor Qualens, and you alone are better than every Roaman, based on what, exactly? Your achievements? You refuse to be considered for Officer selection, another humiliation I bear patiently for you – ancestors know why! – for what I get in return. Your wisdom? The experience of all your twenty years of twisted urges and flighty adoration of a new foreign culture each week – each invariably subjugated by, tributary to or submissive to Roam, incidentally – based on scraps of parchment written by fantasists, charlatans and outcasts given the aura of authority or insight by their remoteness and your gullibility?” “You said yourself that my talents outstrip yours,” Oti said. “Not so far as your pride,” the Consul retorted quickly, as if he had held the opinion for a good long while. “Or your insolence. I wonder, I really do, if Juctor indeed sent you to test me, would I be able to overcome my own pride at your potential, sprung from my loins, and punish you justly? My weak, merciful heart is failing me.” “So why not kill me?” Otibryal felt his chest expand, his ribs straining. “And stop my endless humiliation of you through having my own thoughts and feelings?” “Don’t tempt me, Otibryal,” his father said. He looked Oti right in the eyes, thinking of killing him. Oti wished in that moment that all of Roam would crumble to rubble, taking every Roaman with it. What greater barbarity could there be? “Don’t tempt me, my son.” “Enough!” Otibryal’s mother whacked the orange, padded armrest of her couch. “Enough of this madness. We are a family!” “That is my point!” argued his father, but he was cut off with a look. “Don’t you dare,” she held up a trembling finger. “For months you moan about how you work so hard and never get to see your children, then we finally manage to organise one evening – one evening! – where almost everyone is free, and you spend the entire time arguing with one another! Threatening to kill your own son out of embarrassment, Pagnal, really?” “It’s all bullshit,” Don shrugged, quite nonchalantly tearing into another wing. “He swore not to harm Oti. Swore to General Tusk.” “Really?” asked Oti to Don, touched by Tusk’s concern. “Really?” asked his mother to his father, incredulous. “Yeah,” Don said. Coughy Pagnal bit his lip. “So the diplomatic incident would really be if father hurt Oti.” “Unbelievable,” their mother shook her head at her husband of nearly a quarter of a century. “Look,” the Consul said, clearly reassessing his position and deciding at that moment on a new angle of approach, “none of you appreciate the severity of our situation.” Oti said nothing, happy to let his father continue to damn himself with such absurd hyperbole. Don tossed the bones of his wing into the beautifully patterned bronze bowl along with its predecessors. “The Republic might seem invincible, but below its majestic surface, it is fracturing – rotten with corruption and personal interests,” Oti’s father was picking his words carefully in a way which slightly stilted his speech. “Surely you don’t mean the Dissenters?” Don scoffed. The faction of Senators had grown up in the past several years, shaking up a political scene which had long been defined by two parties: the Eminents, who in rough terms defended the Constitution, the supremacy of the Senate, and the interests of the Familials, and the Reformists, who pushed for greater executive powers for elected magistrates to cut through the bureaucracy of Roam, earning the support of the wider populace for charismatic individuals through crowd-pleasing proposals such as land reforms and wider rights for the Companions, Provincials and lower classes. By and large, the Eminents had been in the ascendancy for the past sixty years since the violent suppression of the Oscumy brothers, who had each attempted to subvert the constitution to force their popular reforms through a stubborn and parochial Senate, though the Reformists claimed the brilliant general and military reformer Hyberital Barbar Adesican as a spiritual successor to the Oscumies. The Dissenters were led by a cadre of prestigious Familials who felt that the Republic since the political reformations of the tyrant Moody Machyal had lost its way, whilst entirely coincidentally holding the Dissenters themselves back from the political careers that they surely deserved. They had unveiled a manifesto in the Law Forum out below the window opposite Oti only a month ago during the elections, but it might as well have simply said the word “DESPERATION” engraved in marble for all the consistency it had lent their platform. Dissenter policies seemed to be like the coats of the changeling cats of Mughanna, shifting patterns and colours to fit their surroundings, but rather lacked the claws and teeth. The party was an uneasy alliance of several very disparate and disagreeable men, and most Senators seemed to see the whole affair as an amusing bit of political theatre, awaiting the magnificence of its inevitable, acrimonious implosion. “No, not just the Dissenters,” his father shook his head firmly, “though underestimating any opponent is a folly.” “As is overestimating them, of course,” said Oti, to a slow, reluctant nod. “Of course, though the Dissenters are bankrolled by Uvinal Voriel-Cuinsal Sarevir,” Coughy Pagnal reminded him. Uvinal was the head of the Voriel-Cuinsal slave-dealing syndicate, and one of the richest men in the Republic. “If you learn one thing from me, Otibryal, it is that it is quite impossible to overestimate the power and influence of money on Roam.” It wasn’t true, of course, as many Roamans died for ideals and love rather than money, but Oti was willing to allow his father this one without quibbling. “And he really hates your father-in-law,” Don pointed out, referring to Oti’s husband Lumosural’s father Proud Machyal Sarevir-Machyal, who had been given the special mandate to rid the seas of pirates as a Marshal over Uvinal after the death of the Officer Salty Semural Voriel-Cuinsal Candoam, a relative of Uvinal’s, whilst resisting capture in the Issycrian Sound, a slight that the slaver had never forgotten. “And has a good deal of unpleasant history with both of Tizzie’s husbands,” Coughy Pagnal said. At the outbreak of the slave revolt led by the gladiator Trucidal the Treacian a decade ago, the Consul Old Degnal Voriel-Otibryal had clashed with Uvinal over the slave-trader’s proposal to dilute the rights of slaves and freemen until the danger of the escalating “Home War” was passed. Scruval Qualens, then serving as Governor of Further Inachria, had mediated the dispute and resolved the attendant political deadlock on Roam, and shortly after married Old Degnal through the debutante Cortisy, forming the alliance of Scruval’s wealth and popularity in Inachria, Old Degnal’s military prowess, and Coughy Pagnal’s prestige as Patriarch of Juctor, that led to the destruction of Trucidal’s army near Augyron – and the ensuing Triumph and Consulship of Scruval alongside Oti’s father-in-law Proud Machyal, who disputed the victory and its glory. Scruval’s status as the wealthiest man on Roam had been secured at Uvinal’s expense, but the legal status of slaves had never been restored to what it had been before the Home War, so Oti wasn’t really sure on what grounds Uvinal would reasonably resent Old Degnal. “But that’s beside the point,” his father continued, “or, rather, it reinforces the point. Which is that we are living in dangerous times, with enemies all around us, some showing us their knives, some with knives behind their smiling eyes, and that we need to work together as a family. Just like how a tent of soldiers have to train to fight alongside one another with discipline, we as a family have to link our shields together, not each turn on the other and allow our enemies through the lines.” “But you don’t even know who our enemies are,” Oti scoffed. “All the more reason to cleave together,” said his father. “I might not know where the blows will come from, but I can be sure that my family is ready for them. And I promise you, Otibryal, that Ife Tusk is a far greater danger than you appreciate. He is no friend of Roam, and he is no friend of yours. But above all, he is like the great copper spire of the World-Beast of Emipotis, drawing lightning from the dark clouds above where the Gods grumble and posture. Every resentment, every scheme, and every hope on Roam will swirl around him, and I am asking you, Otibryal – not commanding you like a tyrant – I am asking you, for your own sake, to stay away from him, for all of you to do so, no matter how perversely fascinating you might find him, or how much you need to test your mettle against his, because I love all of you more dearly than you can know, and I can’t countenance the pain it would cause me if anything were to happen to any one of you.” Even the boys had fallen silent at the apparent sincerity of their half-father’s entreaty. Oti wasn’t fooled, though. He had studied oratory in more languages than his father had even heard of, and knew every trick before his father had even recognised his aptitude and hired him tutors to try and coax the talent out of him. Oti hated it, though, the fakeness of it. The Dissenters weren’t wrong the half of the time that they railed against the artifice of politicians, all saying the same old things in their precise, rehearsed language, and delivering nothing, just holding the floor until the next politician stood up. Sometimes he felt sorry for those tutors his father had hired, that he had teased and toyed with, talking around them to their utter frustration, particularly the slaves, who weren’t able to quit when they realised the futility of their assigned task. His father tried very hard; he was earnest in his insincerity. He just wasn’t very smart, unfortunately. “Please don’t let me down,” Coughy Pagnal said, standing up with an air of finality. Slaves took their cue and began to swarm around them, picking up plates and tables and free couches. “I’m afraid that I must attend to matters of state.” Oti had never heard the latrine called that before. “Thank you all for attending; I apologise for the severity of the discourse. Hopefully once the current diplomatic situation has been resolved, we might reconvene under warmer stars. Die well.” Oti stood along with his mother and siblings. “Die well, father,” they said in rough unison, and the Consul left the Great Banqueting Hall, with the Wife of Roam in close attendance. Oti looked around his remaining family members as the slaves carried away their couches, trying to gauge the mood. The boys were already halfway out of the Hall. Tizzie was a sullen shade of neutral. Don just looked bored. Wordlessly, they drifted apart. Pagnal's Cortisy Juctor The Juctor Law Library was housed in a separate turret off the front-right corner of the Great Banqueting Hall. Cortisy never really liked getting to it from there, as you had to cross a narrow marble walkway, ostentatiously unsupported – arrogantly so, indeed – by ropes or columns. The middle section was a different shade of stone, more noticeably for the fact that the masons had tried to match the travertine but had just missed, whether due to unequal weathering or composition or some other factor she couldn’t be sure, but it gave her the shivers when she had to walk across it, more so than she had ever had on her expedition to the Underbelly. The bridge had collapsed during one (or many) of the earthquakes that had once plagued Roam, the consequence of its growth over the years as it had acquired more and more territory, according to the historians and bestiologists and Oti – though Roam’s size had been consistent since long before Cortisy herself had been born. She wondered if anyone had ever fallen from here. The earthquakes had definitely caused deaths elsewhere, starting first in the wooden houses between the Inner and Outer Walls where the poorer citizens lived. Who knows what might have happened down in the Underbelly, out of view? This seemed a long way to fall, but she would be dashed just a couple of floors below on the marble rooves of the palace buildings beneath; falling from the Underbelly was so much farther. You would know that you were falling for a long time, with no way of stopping. She held the handrail tight as a gust of cold wind blew by, squeezing her eyes shut and ducking ever so slightly. She wondered whether the slaves down in the law courts by the forum below could look up and see her. It would probably cheer up the poor wretches. The gust passed, and she edged along, not thinking about the change in stone and not thinking about earthquakes or falling or the rooves below. She was aided in her not thinking by the gentle plucking of strings from the tower ahead of her, speaking of beautiful woe, just as she had expected. She should have left. She almost had. Her husbands would be expecting her, each in their own way, and her son too (though he should be asleep), but she felt a sisterly tug that she really quite wished she was able to ignore, for all the good it ever did her. At the very least, the lyre might make it worth her while. Otibryal was a cocksure, arrogant, stubborn little prick who had never listened to her or anyone about anything, but he had a way with that instrument which sometimes made him bearable for just a little while. She had no idea where he got if from, this patronage from Candoam, the goddess of art and love and beauty, but it always gave her the impression that maybe the others were right, and that he had a spark of something in him which could become Cortisy-didn’t-know-what. But she never felt as sure that the Gods were real and watched over them – that they had plans for them that might make all of the miseries of life worthwhile – than when she smelled her son’s head of dark brown curls, or when her foolish brother played that lyre. Or when she realised that she had made it across that cursed walkway without tumbling to her death. She silently thanked Juctor and her ancestors and ducked inside the turret. The walls were stacked high with the most prestigious legal and historical scrolls collected into works and authors by wooden shelves, the topmost only accessible by the wheeled ladder which could run around the room’s circumference. In the centre was the top of the spiral staircase which ran all the way down the storeys of the tower to the more mundane works and vast archives of legal cases dating back to before the foundation of the Republic (though the great majority were from the past century or two, since the Feors had sacked Roam from their invasive, rootless World-Beasts). The ceiling had once been a window for astronomical observation, but had been covered over after its repair had become too expensive after yet another earthquake; the paths of the gods through the stars were painted amongst the constellations there now, in a pathetic impression of the wondrous night skies visible from Roam. Oti seemed to like the ceiling: he was lying back on a small pile of cushions, letting his eyes drift through the circles of heroes from antiquity, one for each month, his fingers producing sweet chords from the instrument tucked against his chest as if acting independently from his inattentive mind. Oti had been born in the third lunar month, making his hero Orchasson the Archer (known as Ormanal in Roaman), whose pride was his impossible shot from the foot of Achaegis, killing the fearsome prince Kosthon as he looked over the walls at the approaching Issycrian armies, and whose shame was his flight from Kosthon’s enraged brother Promon, who chased him around the entire World-Beast in his antlered chariot, demanding a duel face to face to restore brother’s honour, which Orchasson knew he could not possibly win. Fathers never spoke to their daughters about their heroes, and there were no ten heroines whose virtues Cortisy could hope to embody, but she was born on the last day of the lunar calendar, which would have made her hero Eughnatheon (Pagnal in Roaman) if she had been a Cortis''al''. The Trickster Prince of Kyraspa had almost won the twenty-year war against the Moon Sons of Achaegis with his year-long sapping of the city, digging up from a cave in the foot with his four sons through the very heart of the World-Beast, living off the waters that ran through it, until he was almost in the palace of King Karamon itself. Though his pride was his intelligence, his shame was his arrogance: he did not kill the sleeping King but woke him so that he might know the brilliance of his demise, explaining the ordeal of their dig in such detail that the King’s son Promon, on his way to relieve himself in the night, overhead the prepared monologue and armed himself, coming to his father’s aid with ferocity lent to him by the gods, who were appalled by the pomposity of the Kyraspan Prince, killing each of his sons and driving Eugnatheon all the way back down through the core of the World-Beast to its foot, and out to the shores of the sea. The forlorn Eugnatheon boarded a ship and fled Aleder for his home, but the gods toyed with him for another decade before he made it back to Kyraspa, where he was killed by his grief-stricken wife Ithesis. By Cortisy’s reckoning, the Kyraspan hero’s shame far outweighed his pride, more than justifying his wife’s actions, but perhaps men found the concept of digging a hole to be far more intelligent than she did, particularly five centuries ago when all these mythical events were supposed to have occurred in what was now Meder, long since overrun by the perfumed and bearded empires of the East. “I thought you had left,” Oti said, in a manner that indicated either that he didn’t care, or thought that seeming not to care served either of them in some way. Cortisy allowed her disappointment at his tone to show, but she didn’t want to seem like she was here to confront him in any way – because she wasn’t – but he did have a way of making everyone into an unintentional antagonist when he was in a mood. Besides, he didn’t even glance down at her from the heroes overhead, making her expression quite irrelevant. “I hadn’t,” she said, smiling at the redundancy. “Ma says you don’t leave very often at all these days.” He was supposed to live with his wife and husband in Proud Machyal’s townhouse, but apparently stayed in the palace here more often than not, unless their father was on the warpath. “Did she send you?” he asked with a sigh, his fingers plucking away. “Nobody sent me,” Cortisy said, pacing around the shelves of the library, glancing at the strange names there. “I’m just worried about you.” “I’m fine,” Oti said. Cortisy regarded him sadly. They had been so close, once, before she had left for the house of Scruval Qualens, just fourteen years old. He had always been such a serious boy, forever longing to be grown up, his mind on the morrow, and now he was a boyish man. Had there been a time when he had felt the age that he was, and Cortisy had missed it, or was he just inherently dissatisfied? Cortisy couldn’t remember the last time that she might have described her brother as “fine”; he was either out of joint because he was in trouble, or obliviously cheery because he thought he had evaded the trouble that he had invited onto himself. That wasn’t the sort of thing you could say to him, though, if you wanted to get anywhere. Cortisy gathered her stola around her and knelt down on an embroidered cushion beside her brother, listening for a few seconds to the gently chords he was picking out, seemingly at random but always pleasant to her ear. “So,” she asked, “what was he like?” “Tusk?” Oti looked down at her for the first time since she had entered, and she smiled as a reward. “Tusk!” she said with convincing excitement, though she really had very little interest in the Naechisian. “You went through all that trouble to get close to him; I thought you deserved at least one opportunity to gush about meeting you’re here, rather than defending yourself from death threats.” Oti gave her a look, but couldn’t suppress the grin bubbling up from within. “He’s fascinating,” he said, finding his words. “Everything you thought he would be?” “In some ways. Very different in others.” He took his cue to elaborate, his playing faltering slightly as he ordered his thoughts. “He has this intensity, Tizzie, like nothing I’ve seen. As if he’s looking right through your skin, with those green eyes. In my histories, I read about this indefinable air of a general, this aura which all the greatest minds of each age struggle to bottle onto the page, which could inspire men to their deaths even as they sing praises of the man who sent them, that it whirls around. We spend our lives around supposedly great men, but – trust me, Tizzie – this is something else entirely.” “My, my!” Cortisy smiled, shoving her brother’s thigh. “I think my dumb little brother is finally in love!” “I’m serious, Tizz,” he beseeched her. “It’s like if Pa actually spoke what he meant, and meant what he spoke. He made Don look like a boy waving a stick around.” “If you looked up from your books for a minute, Oti, you might see that all of the world is just men waving sticks about. These heroes of the past up here,” she waved up at the ceiling dismissively, “were just men with sticks too, but they’ve had centuries of starry-eyed boys like you with artful tongues building them and their sticks up into more than they were.” “Not Tusk,” Oti shook his head free of her blasphemy. “You have to meet him to understand.” “But you said that not everything is as you expected?” “No,” Oti furrowed his brow. He would have frown lines long before laughter lines. “He… he didn’t really want to talk about Naechis all that much.” “Did you want to talk about Roam?” Cortisy asked. “No, though he asked a lot.” “Then why would you expect him to talk about his home?” she asked. “Because,” Oti seemed not to have considered the question before, but was intent on finding an answer nonetheless. “Because I asked?” “So you asked questions and he didn’t answer, and he asked questions and you did?” Cortisy smiled. “Sounds like your beloved played you like that lyre.” “It wasn’t like that,” Oti protested. Cortisy nodded with mock agreement, enjoying winding him up. “It was more that he resented Naechis.” “And you wanted him to tell you that it was a paradise,” Cortisy said. “That you were right to hate Roam and all its traditions that you strive against, and that elsewhere there are places governed by reason and good?” “That doesn’t seem a fair representation of my position,” Oti said, pursing his lips. “It’s not,” Cortisy smirked. “But that is because your position is inherently unfair, from what little I’ve heard of it.” “What is that supposed to mean?” he asked. She could feel him preparing to shut her out, after such a little window of openness. “You’re unhappy,” Cortisy said, her heart breaking for her little brother and the mixture of hurt pride and loneliness on his face. “I can’t remember the last time I saw you happy. And that’s not your fault, at all. But,” she took a preparatory breath, “you act like you’re the only person who has ever been unhappy, or like your life is some unique confluence of unhappiness.” She held up a finger to gently ward off his protestation, and to his credit he closed his mouth. “When, in fact, your unique privileges are what allow you to wallow in your unhappiness. What can a farmhand do when he is unhappy? A slave? They can’t read books in their tower of how things are on Naechis or Issycria, and muse on how the customs of those lands might improve their life, if only Roam might change to suit them. For slaves and farmhands, and stableboys, and fishermen, it makes no difference where they live; they all just wish that they were plump little boys who could sit in towers and gripe about the injustice of being married to beautiful princesses and good-natured noblemen, with a family that loves them. Do you think that the soldiers of the legions, or the armies of your histories, all fought and died with their hearts burning with patriotism? Do the recruiters drag the boys from the fields and ask them whether they would serve Roam, or else perhaps Meder or Black Treacia if they think that their ways are better than ours? Or do they cudgel them into their ranks, forcing them to march despite their terror against other armies whose soldiers would all just as gladly throw down their spears and run home?” “What is your point?” Oti said, his voice dry. The music had long since stopped. “Is there nothing about Roam you would save?” she asked. Her cheeks burned. “Tizzie,” he tried, but she shook her head. He bit his lip. “Pa can be an ass, but he is not wrong about everything,” she said, willing the treacherous water away from her eyes. “The two of you can be so… You never even asked me once how I am, Oti. It’s like there can be no room for anything but your own misery, and we all have to pay tribute to it.” “That’s not fair,” he protested. He hesitated with his lyre, unsure whether to put it down and comfort her. He wobbled as her eyes filled up. “Where have you been, Oti?” she asked. “I’m in that house with those men… You think you’re trapped here, where you can hide from your oh-so-terrible marriage? For eight years – eight years! – I’ve been a prisoner in this city with two husbands older than our father. I’ve never been more than half an hour from you, Oti, and I never see you. I never see anyone. You were my best friend!” “I didn’t know,” he stammered. He looked terrified; frozen in place. “How could you?” she asked, regretting the viciousness of her tone. “You forget about us, Oti.” “I guess assume that if I don’t hear anything…” he said, trying to justify himself to himself. “It’s not enough,” she smiled as she wiped away her tears with the backs of her thumbs. She began to stand up, and the change shook him into action, reaching out to her as he should have before. She granted him a hand. “You can’t just have your thoughts and your stands, Oti. You have to do things, and you have to take ownership of the things you do, and the things you don’t.” “I’m sorry,” he said. She had a feeling he couldn’t hear a word she was saying, and just wanted her to be quiet and stop crying. “I’m sorry, Tizzie.” “Just…” she sighed. “Watch out, Oti. With Tusk. I know you’ll disobey Pa, but perhaps you’ll at least listen to me. He is dangerous, whether he wants Roam destroyed or not. Don’t get too close to him, please, and watch yourself. I’m your family, Oti; I’m part of Roam, all of your family is, and even though you’re a stupid, selfish lump,” he bit a smile, which made her splutter a little laugh, “we love you with all our hearts. I hope that you might realise that you love us too, even if we have made the mistake of being Roamans.” She gave him a heavy smile. “My husbands will be expecting me,” she said, and swept out of the turret and across the walkway without looking back. Category:Chapter Category:Otibryal POV Chapter Category:Cortisy POV Chapter